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Archive: January 2006

(2 entries)

Friday, January 27, 2006

Increasingly small victories

You know how this works. Wherein changing a light bulb becomes a home improvement project worthy of self-satisfaction. Wherein calling someone back within two weeks shows that you are both responsible and concerned. Wherein, you know, posting to your blog a couple times a year will keep the masses peaceful.

Left out of the New York Guide

It’s hard to know what is a Trouble Sells sort of idea any more. I think this one passes, although you may find it a bit twee. I think I’ve always balanced that line between hokum and dysphemism, but I’m also getting older, so you tell me.

A few months back there was a movie that you haven’t heard of, but trust me, it’s a real movie, called Brooklyn Lobster. As a fringe member of the downtown opinion-makers, I was invited by its publicist to the prerelease screening. It was a heart-warming working-class drama starring — for the first time together — the twin powerhouses of Danny Aiello and Jane Curtin. America, or at least I, was not ready. I turned down the invitation and forgot about it.

A couple weeks later I walked by the theater on Second Avenue where it was going to be premiered, on precisely the day it was going to be premiered, a few hours before that premiere. In New York I walk fast, so it was only a few moments before it was all behind me, but in those moments I saw them unloading trucks with all the necessary implements of this event. Posters, folding tables, flowers, and, yes, there was one trunk from which crates of lobster were being unloaded. Lobster that was going to be made into hors d’oeuvres for the attendees.

I then realized my misreading of the situation. While I thought I was a tough-as-nails arbiter of taste by turning down this seemingly drab film, I was in fact nothing but a rube. Instead of proving my New York cool by not attending a bad movie, I should have proven it by attending it for the food that would be there. Because when a movie has the name of an exotic food in its title, the opening night reception is guaranteed to feature real examples of that exotic food. The literal-mindedness of publicity staff assures this. And so, this bad movie was going to have good food associated with it, for free, but only on one occasion in history, and I blew it.

However, I am keeping my eye out for Gowanus Caviar with Dianne Wiest and Dana Carvey. It is going to be a real tear-jerker.